Theorizing Regulatory Enforcement and Compliance

Abstract

Regulation is a very relevant issue in today's society. To a large degree we organize our soci-ety by regulation and law enforcement. When ever there is a disaster, scandal or social prob-lem society expects politicians and government to solve it, and the way of solving it involves most of the time law and law enforcement. Regulatory and enforcement agencies are increas-ing throughout the world in numbers and visibility. However, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of enforcement, as the behaviour of regulatees is influenced by many other factors than enforcement alone. Therefore, a central question in social science is which enforcement strategies result in the desired behaviour of regulatees. Early theories on law enforcement described two styles, deterrence versus com-pliance. The newer theories, however, go beyond these two styles. The new theories intro-duce ideas of responsiveness, flexibility or smart regulation and enforcement. Furthermore, these theories introduce roles for third parties, such as NGO's, industry organizations and citizens, in the enforcement process. Self-regulation and co-regulation are in the centre of scientific attention. In other words: Focus today is on new ways of creating compliance and what part interaction and cooperation between regulator and regulatees plays in maximizing compliance. However, existing knowledge and views on law enforcement and compliance- especially these new ways of creating compliance - are fragmented. The scientific literature con-tains economic, legal and administrative perspectives. The aim of our panel is to integrate these fragmented knowledge and views through papers that analyse and/or theorize on dif-ferent aspects of these new ideas about law enforcement and compliance. Problems of implementation, organizational issues in regulatory agencies because of new ways of enforce-ment, the effect of different kinds of interaction between regulatee and regulator, cost and benefits of mutual dependencies between the enforcement agencies themselves, politicians, policy-makers and the regulatees are possible tropics for t his panel.

Title	Details
The institutionalization of regulatory domain perception - The case of the UK Financial Ombudsman Service	View Paper Details
Enforcement; Strategies of Regulatees and Inspectors	View Paper Details
Technical Tools of Effective Law Making	View Paper Details
Ways of responsiveness: in what ways - if any - is the ACCC responsive in its interactions with business regulatees?	View Paper Details
[TABLED PAPER] EU Regulatory Agencies: What Lessons to be Learned for Compliance Theory?	View Paper Details